IMAGE: China Global South Project

After the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing in early September, many African
analysts have penned think pieces celebrating Africa-China relations. This mirrors the starry-eyed
adulation by African thinkers based on the Africa-plus-one summits that have become a fashionable
means of global power engagement in Africa.

Peruse African media over the last couple of months and you will sample praise for the conference or
summit diplomacy strategized by great and middle powers to woo Africa on economic, political, and
cultural fronts. The African analysts who look at the summits with rose-tinted glasses are either naïve
in uncritically ululating Africa’s subservience to global power agendas or are willingly complicit in the
institutionalization of Africa’s co-option.

The more nuanced approach accounting for pessimism, optimism, and pragmatism regarding Africa’s
summit-based engagement with global powers is much more organic, less artificial, and good for
advancing African interests.

Balanced analysis of the significance of summits is needed given the rise in this form of international
engagement. The Africa-plus-one summits are no longer incipient but stable fixtures on the global
diplomatic calendar!

The African Union has clarified its external engagement categories into continent-to-continent,
continent-to-country, partnerships in demand, and AU partnerships with specific external institutions
of organizations. Of these, the continent-to-country category is probably the most popular, yet,
problematic. A common peeve on social media is how one country can summon leaders from large
swathes of the continent into a meeting! This is a valid critique considering that country-to-continent
partnerships often operate outside of and even challenge multilateral architectures such as the United
Nations.

The Forum on China Africa Cooperation Summit, a great-power-plus-Africa convening happened on
September 4 and 6 coinciding with the Indonesia-Africa Forum held from September 1 to 3. The
Indonesia-Africa Summit is an example of middle-power-plus-Africa summitry. Scanning the sucking of
Africa into great power and middle or emerging power schemes reveals the crisis of a continent more
courted than courting.

In May, it was the turn for South Korea, laying out the first major summit calibrated as supporting
Africa’s industrialization through trade and investments. In January-February 2024, Italy entered the
fray, convening the Italy-Africa summit whose Mattei Plan prioritized energy-related deals with the
continent. In 2023, Russia hosted African leaders in an event long on the notions of sovereignty read
as Russia’s lobbying of African states to support its war in/with Ukraine. The European Union-led EU
Africa summit of February 2022 presented proposals for managing Africa’s debt problems. Japan’s
Tokyo International Conference on Africa’s Development (TICAD) in Tunis in August 2022 was replete
with climate change plans. In December 2022, the United States invited African leaders to Washington
DC to announce new plans with the digital economy and critical minerals top of the agenda. The
Turkey-Africa Summit was held in 2021 touting Turkey’s contribution to Africa’s peace and security
with generous infusions of the former Ottoman empire’s resurgence in Africa’s trade.

The density of these summits means that Africa is being pulled into many different directions by the
global powers. Each summit is replete with declarations and action plans largely crafted in Beijing,
Seoul, Rome, Moscow, Brussels, Tokyo, Washington DC, Ankara, and elsewhere. If the African Union
were a human being living in Addis Ababa, she would be turning her head every so often to gaze in the
direction of these cities. Yet, there is so much such a personification of Africa would be missing in her
own African home!

In the past, some analysts dismissed the summits are perfunctory jamborees calculated at the soft
power that comes with hosting large numbers of African leaders. It is now patent that the summits are
more than mere global public relations events. One only needs to look at the declarations and action
plans emanating from the summits to understand the agendas targeted at Africa by the global powers
in a decidedly multipolar world. The summits are shiny wrappings concealing the economic, security,
political, and cultural interests and priorities of the powers.

One could argue that the various Africa-plus-one summits are joint partnerships. The argument goes
that the Forum on China Africa Cooperation is a mutual, win-win partnership as is the Tokyo
International Conference on Africa’s Development. The US Africa Leaders Summit of 2022 was similarly
framed as a meeting of equals. Well, various factors pour tonnes of cold water on such heady
optimism.

First, at the strategic levels, the summits are initiated by the global powers in line with their domestic
and international priorities. Africans are mere invitees even though their concurrence in the illusion of
“equal” partnership agreements is important for legitimacy. Moreover, the Summits are projections of
power in a competitive multipolar world with Africa persuaded to take sides. Second, at the pragmatic
level, various studies and observations show that African leaders and delegations arrive at the summit
without any iota of the agenda. Do a discourse analysis of the summit resolutions and you will quickly
realize that African interests are secondary to those of the sponsoring powers. Third, at the tactical
level, the budgets for hosting the summits are underwritten by the global powers, and as we know, he
who pays the piper plays the tune. Indeed, the declarations and action plans are long on what the
global powers would do for Africa, short on what Africa would do, if not for the partnerships, at least
for itself!

Given the asymmetries of the Africa-plus-one summits, should Africa walk away from them? By all
means not. Instead, Africa should take advantage of the now-established summitry diplomacy to play
the game to their own advantage. To start with, Africa, as the weaker party in the partnerships, risks
the ire of the global powers – many of which it is financially indebted – if it declines the entreaties. Ask
the question: does Africa want to pick quarrels with external suitors? The answer is, no, the time is not
ripe for Africa to walk away from nations looking to woo it.

Secondly, even though the global powers are the greater beneficiaries of the agreements emerging
from the summits, Africans also benefit, even if the benefits are a little more than crumbs. The
smarter approach would be for Africans to drive hard-nosed bargains rather than subserviently
accepting the alms thrown at them. Third, some of the summits – particularly with the EU, China,
and Japan – have grown beyond summitry into engagement mechanisms complete with secretariats
and linked to multilateral organizations and agendas. Rather than tempestuously abandon the
summits, Africa should institutionalize robust diplomatic mechanisms thereby boosting its summitry
negotiation capacity. Where the benefits from the summits have been weak, Africans should prepare
to re-negotiate agreements and meticulously prepare for future ones.

Fortuitously, the African Union has become sensitized enough to the significance of the summits to
start charting an external engagement framework. The African Union Commission Chairman Moussa
Faki Mahamat struck just such as chord during the Italy-Africa summit, calling for a “paradigm shift”
and arguing that Africa should not go to summits as a beggar.

Analysts who skew perspectives to boost one Africa-plus-country partnership over another do a
disservice to a more strategic approach on the whole. Instead, such analysts – many of them scholars
and public intellectuals of note – should contribute to African agency toward global powers. Their
ideas would help the AU, particularly the Partnerships Management and Resource Mobilisation
Directorate, to implement a framework that starts with African interests rather than the other way
around.

By Dr. Bob Wekesa